The Australian government cannot duck and weave and imply that events on Manus Island involving asylum seekers were lawless acts over which it had no control. A policy aimed at “stopping the boats” does…
Amid the ongoing bad news about Manus Island has come the revelation that the Australian government has approached Cambodia with a view to resettling some asylum seekers in the impoverished nation. So…
Another day, another data breach. The response to that breach tells us something about privacy law, the media and bureaucracies. On Wednesday, The Guardian revealed that the Department of Immigration and…
The release on Wednesday of the review into the circumstances of how and why the Australian navy repeatedly entered Indonesian waters might have been expected finally to reveal information about Australia’s…
Defining “success” in refugee protection can be a tricky proposition. It could be a reduction in the number of people displaced worldwide, places made available for refugee resettlement or the number of…
We rightly celebrate living in a society where law and order prevail. Being able to follow established rules allows for the smooth operation of the many necessary transactions of everyday life. Yet it…
This week, two very different Australian comics about asylum seekers have received widespread attention. The first is At work inside our detention centres: A guard’s story by Melbourne comics artist Sam…
The immigration department has added new contemporary imagery to the growing list of iconic works that surround the vexed issue of asylum seekers. Most Australians can already vividly recall media of the…
Prime minister Tony Abbott’s three-word slogan “stop the boats” may be meeting its promise. Last Friday, Abbott was “very pleased” to point out that it was the “50th day without an illegal boat arriving…
The Abbott government has reacted indignantly to allegations by Sudanese asylum seeker Yousif Ibrahim Fasher that asylum seekers were mistreated and had their hands deliberately burnt by Australian Navy…
The 1,000-plus children currently detained in immigration detention facilities in Australia and Nauru are at risk of serious mental health and developmental problems. The Human Rights Commission this week…
The ABC’s handling of allegations that Australian Navy personnel deliberately injured asylum seekers has become nastily entangled with an array of complex issues. These include: the politics of ABC bias…
When, some eight or nine years ago, I began researching the responses of Australian and refugee theatre makers, filmmakers and writers to asylum seeker debates it was very easy to share the hopes for political…
Australia should respond to the extraordinary actions of the government of Nauru in deporting and terminating the employment of its only magistrate, Peter Law, and denying its Chief Justice, Geoffrey Eames…
The decision by the Australian government to turn asylum seeker boats back into Indonesia’s territorial waters and its ports was always a high-risk game. It is no surprise that it has ended in a serious…
Would you be pleased to find a nation of such barbarous temper that, breaking out in hideous violence, would not afford you an abode on earth … What would you think to be thus used? This is the strangers…
Australia has been engaging in “tow-backs” of asylum-seeker boats. This has involved intercepting boats carrying asylum seekers at sea, before they reach Australia, and forcing them to return to Indonesia…
I was the only lady in the group that was caught by [CID](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Investigation_Department_(Sri_Lanka) [Criminal Investigation Department]. CID beat the men but to me they…
On Friday, the National Audit Office released a report detailing its investigation into the COMPASS housing project, a series of contracts between the Home Office and three service providers – G4S, Serco…
Recent reports that the Australian Navy has turned back two asylum seeker boats to Indonesian waters remain shrouded under a veil of secrecy. Australia remains subject to downgraded levels of co-operation…